Since the last “Poor Player’s Paradise,” the sun has come out and the first day of summer is just a few weeks away. So, how best to celebrate this? Easy: stay the hell inside your house. It’s hot out—too hot to go screwing around outdoors like some kind of sweaty jackass. Your friends may laugh at you for “wasting” your summer sitting inside playing videogames while they lay out in the sun and get tans, but we’ll see who’s laughing when all of your friends die of skin cancer.

Actually, probably nobody would be laughing. That would just be sad. I mean, your friends would all be dead, and their families—man, their families would just be devast–

OK, fine; just forget I even brought it up. I’m trying to say that cheap videogames would be nice this summer, is all. Jeez.

Deal-Seekers (Over $20)

Unless that Professor Layton Meets Phoenix Wright game is released in English sometime this year, Portal 2 is a pretty solid contender to be GameCola’s 2011 Game of the Year. It’s a stellar sequel to what is, apparently, GameCola’s favorite game ever, and it’s already been reviewed here with a fine score.

It’s barely over a month old and already has dropped $20 from its release price. Granted, that price may be a bit high for a “Poor Player’s Paradise” game, but if you’re going to drop $40 on a game you might as well shoot for the moon and drop it on the best—an amazing AAA game with excellent single-player and co-op campaigns.

Cheapskates (Under $20)

It’s a well-known GameCola law that all writers have to publish one big gushy handjob of an article about Telltale Games per month, so, naturally, I was scooped on this one by our own Nathaniel “Hoover Dam” Hoover in his effort to meet this rigorously enforced quota.

Though we may talk about Telltale pretty often around here, this sale is really worth mentioning twice. Not only does Telltale put out the best adventure games around these days, these prices are incredibly bargain basement. Here’s a sampling of my recommendations:

Sam and Max Complete Collection – $12.50
Max and Crossbones T-Shirt – $4.75
Sam and Max: Freelance Police Complete Series DVD set –  $6.24
Tales of Monkey Island Deluxe Treasure Chest (pre-order) – $12.50
(includes Tales of Monkey Island full season and a TON of prizes)
Poker Night at the Inventory – $1.25
Back To The Future T-shirt – $4.74

There’s a whole lot of other cool stuff over at Telltale’s store, and the sale is on now until June 30. Don’t forget to consult with Nathaniel Hoover for more details.

Homeless (Absolutely Free)

Sony’s PlayStation Network is back up, and they’ve begun their Sorry-Your-Credit-Card-Information-Was-Stolen-and-Someone-in-Boseman-Montana-Used-it-To-Buy-a-Keurig-Coffee-Machine-and-Six-Hundred-Dollars-Worth-Of-iTunes-Downloads-So-Now-Your-Credit-is-Destroyed-and-You-Can-No-Longer-Get-Loans promotion (called the “Welcome Back” promotion for brevity). This entitles everybody who had an account before PSN got cyber-9/11′d to pick two free games out of a list of five. The games to choose from (in order of my personal preference) are:

LittleBigPlanet – If you have a PS3 and you don’t have this game, then you’ve already made your first decision and now must decide what your second game will be.
inFAMOUS – A ransom note of a game that seems to rip a bunch of elements from other games (Assassin’s Creed’s roof-jumping parkour, every Bioware game’s paragon/puppy kicker morality system, BioShock’s plasmids if you only ever got electric and a stoic, gravelly-voiced, personalityless main character which we’ve seen in EVERY FPS EVER), and it actually puts them all together into a game that seemed pretty fun in the small amount of time I’ve played it.
Wipeout HD – A futuristic racing game that plays like a combination of Mario Kart and F-Zero.
Super Stardust HD – It’s like Asteroids, but confined within the orbit of a planet. It’s a simple game and seems like just the thing if you just want to kill a few minutes with a quick pick-up-and-play game.
Dead Nation – It’s a…oh Christ, come on, let’s not lie to each other; we both know what this game is about. Zombies. It’s yet another top-down zombie shooter, but, thankfully, it’s well made and pretty fun.

You also get two PSP games from a selection of four (LittleBigPlanet, ModNation Racers, Pursuit Force, and Killzone Liberation). I haven’t played any of these so I can’t give a synopsis.

Now, earlier I said that this promotion applies to everyone who had an account before the big PSN outage. Just to clarify, I mean everyone. If your wife, roommate, boyfriend, cousin or pet iguana had an account all on the same PS3, you all get two games.

It doesn’t end at the free games, though. You also get 30 days of Playstation Plus for free, too. For those unaware, here’s some quick info on how Playstation Plus works.

Basically, you can access a whole list of deals that regular PSN members can’t. This includes free or discounted games, game add-ons, avatars, and themes. Free games can only be played for as long as you’re a PS Plus member. Discounted games or any add-ons, themes, or avatars (free or otherwise) will stay with you even if you drop PS Plus. At the time of writing, members can get Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Oddworld: Abe’s Exodus, Comet Crash and a slew of PS3 Minis games for free. Remember, since these go away in a month unless you renew PS Plus, it might be a good idea to play these and get your fill and play your other free games in a month. Also, download all add-on content for any game you so much as think you could possibly own and play in the future. The add-ons are free and they stay with you, so you might as well cash in. For those who had PS Plus before the outage, you’ll get a 60-day extension.

Ghostbusters? Yes, have some.

You also have access to 100 free PS Home items (nobody cares so I’m not going to list them all here), and you can rent Ghostbusters, Bad Boys or Final Fantasy: The Sprits Within. So, one classic everybody’s seen and two giant piles of stupid. Obviously Sony didn’t dig too deep into the Columbia Pictures vaults for these, but you can’t win them all I guess.

So, PSN users, I hope this has been helpful to you, and that, once you choose your games, 22 hours later when they’re done downloading, and 17 hours after that when they’re done installing, and 11 hours after that when they’re done updating, and about a half hour after when you agree to all the EULA screens, you have a delightful time with your pile of free games courtesy of Sony and their complete and utter ineptitude.

WHY HASN’T ANYONE TOLD ME ABOUT THIS?!

This isn’t actually “news” in any possible sense—according to 1up, TMI has been on the PlayStation Network since last June—but nobody TOLD ME. Here I am, slogging through the compressed audio and fuzzy visuals of the WiiWare version, after already careening through the poorly-controlled PC version—and there’s an actual PERFECT version available somewhere?! And it has CHEEVOS?! (I mean TROPHIES?!) For each individual game?! And it’s only $20?! I SHOULD HAVE BEEN INFORMED.

Consider this a public service announcement. Don’t do what I did. Don’t play the crappy versions of Tales of Monkey Island; there’s a much more playable version of the funniest game of 2009 available RIGHT NOW on PSN. Between that, Strong Bad, and Sam & Max: The Devil’s Playhouse, there’s plenty of demented item-combining you can do while waiting for the PSN release of Back to the Future: The Game—which, according to some sources, will be coming out “probably at least before the new Zelda game.”

Personally, the game would be a DAY ONE PURCH for me if I could play through the whole right right away as Mr. Wood, but since they use the word “unlockable,” I’m guessing that won’t be happening, since you’ll probably have to beat the game or do some other ridiculous thing first.

Also of note is that his character model doesn’t look too much like that hideous monster from the TMI series; rather, he looks a lot more like the hideous monsters from the Clone Wars cartoon movie thing…which I guess is an improvement?

The Force Unleashed II is currently scheduled for release on October 26 for basically everything.

• Paul and Lizo’s big news
• Telltale’s upcoming Back to the Future episodic series…which, technically, wasn’t announced or even shown at E3
• The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, which some of us think wasn’t quite ready for the public spotlight

• GoldenEye for the Wii, which Paul isn’t planning to get excited about because he still remembers 2004’s GoldenEye: Rogue Agent
• Kirby’s Epic Yarn, which Lizo is interested in because she likes yarn
• Journey, the upcoming exploration game by the developers of Flower
• The 3DS remake of Ocarina of Time, which Michael hopes will be a little better than the DS remake of Mario 64
• Why Michael prefers Nancy Drew games to Monkey Island
• Adventure game dialogue
• The best and less-best movies by Pixar
• Portal 2, and whether the Portal games qualify as “shooting games”
• Mario’s love for cake
• Super Mario Galaxy 2’s bombshell that Mario and Peach are now an official couple
• LittleBigPlanet 2’s new level creation tools
• Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, and which colors Paul dyed his hair in high school
• What PSN, WiiWare, and XBLA are
• How Paul feels a little betrayed by Rock Band’s annual release schedule
• The game we all wish we’d heard more about at E3 (besides Back to the Future)

Enjoy!:
GC Podcast #25

Cave Story. If you haven’t played it yet, then what the hell is wrong with you?

I know, with a title like Cave Story, you think it’s going to be another dungeon crawler with all the appeal of a gopher’s testicle. But trust me, this game is way cooler than a gopher’s testicle, maybe even two gopher’s testicles.

I wouldn’t go as far as to say Cave Story is the best game ever made, but I am absolutely gutted it didn’t occur to me to vote for the game in the GC Top 50.

Cave Story is a freeware Windows game that has received nothing but the highest praise. If it were a commercial game, it would do absolutely well and sell loads of copies. Well, now it is a commercial game, courtesy of Nicalis, so get your ass over to the Wii Shop Channel.

I mean it.

Bitch.

Cave Story is the best freeware game ever. Chex Quest 3 comes incredibly close for me, but falls due to using an existing and widely available engine. There’s also iji,  Echoes and La Mulana to contend with, but Cave Story manages to beat them all. Maybe it’s because the entire story, scenario, engine, graphics and music of Cave Story were all created by one man.

If you’ve never played Cave Story, you’re in luck, because it has been ported to Nintendo’s finest.

This game didn’t need to be ported, mind you. But in doing so, Nicalis has opened the game up to a potential new audience, and dare I say those who have played the game before, as well.

If you’ve played Cave Story, you know and sure as hell can’t deny that feeling you got twenty minutes in—where you wanted to blow your life savings on it, but couldn’t.

Well, now you can.

Wii-Ware hasn’t been all that much of a hit for me. Sure, it can boast the rather good Tales of Monkey Island series, but those games are also available for PC. Sure, so is Cave Story, but… but… all right, you stumped me there, moot point.

Not that many Wii-Ware games have been truly well regarded, either. This is changing with Cave Story, because, just between you and me, freeware fans… Nicalis is porting La Mulana to the WiiWare too.

Two of the best games you can get for free, you can get by paying for! Isn’t that great news? Of course it is!

Nicalis has added a number of features to Cave Story, to make this commercial version worth owning. I thought, “So long as some of the profits are going to Pixel (the original developer), or a charity/organisation of his choice, then I feel it is my duty”.

As it is yours, also.

The main additions to this re-release of Cave Story are the new difficulty modes, “official” translation and bundled DLC (and support for more), the addition of EDTV support (480p), updated graphics and updated music.

The updated graphics are, even for a purist such as me, a very welcome change. Characters look a lot more refined, the lines are smoother. It still retains the “Fami-Clone” look that makes the game so appealing, but makes the necessary changes to ensure the game looks good on a television capable of Extra Definition.

The soundtrack changes are unnecessary and unwelcome. First of all, music playback is handled differently, probably to make the newer soundtrack fit in the place of the older one. At times, the new arrangements of the classic melodies are good, but for the most part, they just plain aren’t. The jingles themselves have been slaughtered, eaten and removed via liposuction… and then eaten again.

Thankfully, you can switch back to the original graphics and soundtrack at any time outside of gameplay. Also, I appreciate that you can change either or both, meaning you can play Cave Story with the sexy graphics but keep the original soundtrack. Kind of like the promise that we’ll be able to play the next Insert Word Here of Monkey Island remake with character voices but keep the original graphics.

Cave Story itself is reminiscent of Metroid and Turrican. It is a blend of exploration and shooting, which would feel at home on any number of older gaming systems.

The world itself is spanningly vast, and for a freeware game, this packs more hours of gameplay than you’d imagine at first.

You meander your way through large levels and smaller hub areas, all interconnected. The exploration is the key element, but the shooting isn’t to be sniffed at.

It is true that the open-ended exploration is less open-ended and more “levelly”, which was my one flaw with Crash: Mind Over Mutant, but it still hits the hunger spot for free-roam, with that big juicy steak and fries that you’ve been hankering for.

The game uses a levelling up system for weapons, which goes from Lv.1 to Lv.3. A weapon’s rate of fire, projectiles and damage changes with each level of the weapon—but the key difference here to the other games that have tried this is that your weapon is constantly changing level.

When you take damage, you lose health, but you also lose experience in the weapon you are holding. Keep getting hit and—given the damage doesn’t kill you—your weapon will end up far worse.

Collecting experience from enemies is absolutely vital, and it is always good to stockpile a little more experience than you need into each weapon, just so you’re on the safe side if you take a blow and your experience is damaged the most.

I haven’t played another game where you find yourself scrambling for experience this erratically, with consistent inconsistency.

I need the experience, but it has landed all the way over there. Well, do I try to get it? Oh no, it’s going to disappear! I need it. I need to grab it quickly! Then I walk into the spikes and die. It isn’t frustrating when this happens—no, it’s hilarious.

The Nemesis, the hidden comedy weapon of the game, does insane damage at Lv.1, and shoots harmless rubber ducks on wheels at Lv.3, requiring you avoid all experience shards that enemies drop! If you grab experience whilst holding the Nemesis, you have to deliberately inflict damage on yourself, which I think is hilarious.

Cave Story also has a brilliant and well-planned storyline, which slowly leaks the facts about your character to you as you’re playing.

It’s a mix of the average “amnesia” story, with a sudden twist of magic, gunfire and rabbit-people. I’d hate to spoil any of it for you, so I won’t. My lips are sealed shut.

Up there with Noitu Love 2 and La Mulana, Cave Story is all about the quality AND the quantity.

I would never have it any other way.

Known for its cause-and-effect driven endings, Cave Story spawned the phrase, “There’s another ending!?”

So many of your actions made in short, fleeting moments affect the ending and the events that follow. Swap the Polar Star for the Machine Gun? Bad ending. Grab the Booster v0.8? Bad ending, sorry.

This creates an immense amount of replayability, as the game’s very addictive nature draws you back, and you want to succeed where you previously failed. I found myself playing my fifth run with a guide, trying to make the perfect run-through.

Shortly after the PC version (and translation), a homebrew port was released for the Playstation Portable, which added a widescreen video mode. Cave Story feels absolutely stunning as a handheld game, but as a console game, it feels just as good as ever.

The controls aren’t quite as good as they were on the PSP port (that goes without saying; weapon switching on L and R was a godsend). Even despite this, playing the game on a sideways Wii-mote feels okay. It isn’t great and it isn’t dreadful, and it’s certainly playable. Perhaps not using the B trigger for weapon changes would be better, as I don’t like to find myself unintentionally switching weapon mid-way through a battle.

If the controls are not enough to give you slight difficulty, this is a painstakingly difficult game. The difficulty stems from the trying to achieve the better endings, and also the harder nature of DLC—The Sanctuary and Boss Rush modes—which has been bundled with the game instead of coming seperately as originally planned. These modes will happily oblige in making you their bitch, which if you’ve played Cave Story for the harder endings, you’re more than ready for.

Even if you’re new to Cave Story, you should drop the $12 on this. I know you won’t though.

I know you hate how the Wii’s points system operates.

I know you hate how you have to buy more points than you’re going to use.

I know how you hate the idea of paying for a downloadable game when you’re happy to shell out full price for a re-release of a crappy game with two new characters and a handful of stuff that should’ve been there first time around.

Super Street Fighter IV, I just described, by the way.

But, you know, you can change this. Downloadable games are substantial games too. They’ll sustain you just as much, if not more, than Capcom’s latest IP milking. You want fun? The first letter in fun is C, the second is A, the third is V—actually, I can’t be bothered; that joke is lame.

Only just recently, Michael Gray ripped into the Wii version of Jammy Sammy, for it being an unfaithful port that stripped out some of the best features. Luckily for Cave Story, the port was handled by a company that loves and appreciates the game, and with full involvement of the original developer.

The result? Only the best damn port ever made, truth be told, honest to God.

Hell, you read reviews on GameCola. You’re a real gamer. You and Mario are best of friends. You grew up with the old-school NES. You know what and where the warp whistles are. You owe it to yourself, and Pixel, to purchase this game.

The only gripe I can truly think of would be the new translation. I knew the script for Cave Story rather well, and lines of text I’ve expected have been translated differently. The area “Grasslands” has been renamed to “Bushlands”, and you probably wouldn’t fathom how much that pisses me off.

But I understand why they needed to re-translate the game—Aeon Genesis’ translation was done for free, as a non-profit translation, and it would be illegal to sell the game with that translation. So fair enough, just annoys me is all. The story is still very much clear (perhaps now more so, devoid of all confusion over particular word meanings).

The Wii has been eternally graced with the best game ever made by one man alone.

I don’t want to come out and say that’s the case with Monkey Island, because I still get hate mail from the time I said there’s not much more to Final Fantasy VI Advance besides wandering around and fighting 10,000 identical random battles, but Justin has a really good point. I just need to find a way to reword what he said and apply it to this game without using descriptive phrases like “pure drek” and “so linear that it’s basically watching a movie instead of playing a videogame, just like Phoenix Wright.”

So let me start over.

Elaine and Guybrush apparently got married when I wasn't looking. That's interesting, because the last thing I heard, there were problems with the wedding ring.

Hi! My name is Michael, and I’ve been told that I absolutely have to start playing Monkey Island games, or else pirates will attack me in my sleep. From what I can tell, there are three main reasons why Monkey Island is the greatest point-and-click adventure series ever:

1. The puzzles are really well done.
2. The jokes are super funny!
3. Monkeys and pirates are involved somehow.

I’ve seen bits and pieces of the other games, so I know the general plot of the series. You star as Guybrush Threepwood, Bumbling Pirate. He’s supposed to save the world (and his wife) from the evil zombie pirate LeChuck, but inevitably, Guybrush messes up somehow and makes the situation 100 times worse. Plus, Voodoo Lady is involved. That’s the plot of all the games, right?

Tales of Monkey Island: Launch of the Screaming Narwhal begins with Guybrush attempting to stop LeChuck with some magical root beer. The game’s automatic hint/control scheme spoon-feeds you through the game’s system of using/combining items in order to get the root beer. Guybrush then promptly drops the root beer, so now he has to find some more, and the automatic hints go away.

Suggestion to Game Designers: Don’t get rid of automatic hints before the player has solved the first puzzle of the game.

So now I’m on a boat with various items I can look at, but can’t interact with (like the door). What does this have to do with root beer?

Hmmm.

Hmmmm…

I have no idea what I’m supposed to do right now. Why did the hints go away?

[Fast forward ten minutes. Absolutely nothing has changed.] Seriously, I have no idea what to do! Stupid game!

[Fast forward another ten minutes.] How is this supposed to be fun again?

[Fast forward another ten minutes.] I give up. This game is stupid.

Asking Elaine what to do causes her to give you a hint...just kidding.

It turns out the solution to the puzzle is to use your cutlass on the offscreen item you can’t see, use that on the other offscreen item you can’t see, close your eyes, tap your heels three times, say “There’s no such thing as making sense! There’s no such thing as making sense!”, and presto! Instant root beer! Only Guybrush screws up again, the root beer catches on fire (there’s no such thing as making sense, remember?), the ship explodes, and I’m left with a bad taste in my mouth. This is supposed to be a well-done puzzle? A puzzle whose solution is “use random items on each other for no reason”?

Let me make a brief change to that list of reasons to play this game.

1. The puzzles are really well done. WRONG
2. The jokes are super funny!
3. Monkeys and pirates are involved somehow.

Sadly, most of the puzzles in this game have similar, counter-intuitive solutions. As you can guess, it is extremely frustrating and annoying to waste your time trying to solve illogical puzzles. Eventually, you get reduced to using the strategy of “try out every single item you have until you find the one that that works,” which negates any sense of accomplishment for solving a puzzle.

Note from Editor: Ignore everything Michael just said. The puzzles are perfectly logical and make tons of sense. You just need to be in the right mindset to be able to understand them.

Note from Michael: …Drunk?

Note from Editor: You’re fired.

So much for puzzles. What about the hilarious jokes we were promised in obnoxiously large font?

Um...ha ha?

Almost every joke in the game has the exact same setup: something happens, and Guybrush makes a wry/sarcastic comment. For example, if you pick up a pink unicorn item, Guybrush might say something like, “Oh boy, a pink unicorn. That’s something no pirate can do without.”

At least, I’m guessing that’s how things are supposed to work. As you can see in the above picture, Guybrush doesn’t tell jokes that are obvious or straightforward. To be honest, I can’t tell if Guybrush is making jokes, or just being weird. Weird can be funny sometimes, but in general, I was more confused than amused by what Guybrush said. Most of his dialogue is as random as those puzzle solutions! Perhaps what this game really needs is a laugh track.

The good news is that I’m only talking about 80% of the jokes in the game. The other 20% of the jokes are, as promised, rather amusing and jolly good fun. You can certainly look forward to them, but don’t expect to see anything so incredibly hilarious that you’ll hurt yourself laughing.

Is that supposed to be a joke, or is it just weird dialogue? I can't tell.

So let’s make another minor change to the list of reasons to play this game:

1. The puzzles are really well done. WRONG
2. The jokes are super funny! WRONG
3. Monkeys and pirates are involved somehow. CORRECT

Monkeys and pirates do appear in this game. There are fourteen monkeys and five or so pirates. One out of three isn’t bad, I guess.

List of Other Things I Want To Mention Before Concluding This Article:

• The controls are not as bad as Paul Franzen makes them out to be. Click and hold the mouse on the left-hand side of the screen, and Guybrush goes left. Simple, even if Guybrush does get trapped in corners sometimes.
• The French guy is the most annoying character I’ve seen in a while.
• Why is it that the characters feel compelled to snap their fingers so often?
• I’m annoyed at the fact that whenever you pick a dialogue option, Guybrush says something different. Why bother pretending to give people dialogue options when he’s going to say whatever he wants anyway?
• Halfway through the game, I decided to stop because it wasn’t fun(ny). Instead of playing the second half of the game, I watched it on YouTube, and surprisingly, the enjoyment factor immediately went up by 50%. That is, once I no longer had to worry about fighting the puzzle system, I was actually entertained by this game. I was surprised, to say the least.

I want to say something nice about this game in conclusion, but to be honest, I can’t see much about this game that would appeal to someone who isn’t already a Monkey Island fan. The puzzle system is so bad that it completely ruins the game, only about one joke in five makes sense, and I can only presume from the abrupt ending that the Tales of Monkey Island game was split into five games in order to make more money. So much for being the best game ever.

Man, this is kind of awkward.

I guess I’d better just get it over with.

If you’ve been following my reviews of Tales of Monkey Island—Telltale Games’s latest series of point-and-click adventure games about a pirate, a pox, and wacky hi-jinx, you know I think that, if TMI isn’t quite The Best Thing Ever, it’s at least pretty high up there, ranking somewhere near “cake,” or, perhaps, “taking naps in the shower.” I’ve been consistently giving the games in this series high scores, and I’ve been saying things like, “THIS GAME IS FREAKING AWESOME,” or—this is an actual quote from one of my reviews—”you’re doing yourself a disservice if you don’t at least check the TMI games out.” So I wouldn’t be surprised if you, the loyal GameCola reader, having read my reviews, decided to plunker down some hard-earned Washingtons to pick up the whole episodic series, based on what I had to say about the previous four games.

Hmmm.

OK, so, here’s the thing: The other four Tales of Monkey Island games are totally great, totally fun, and totally worth your money and time. This one, though? Rise of the Pirate God? If Tales of Monkey Island is Boy Meets World, then Rise of the Pirate God is the season where everyone graduates high school, Corey and Topenga get married, and Mr. Feeny stalks the cast all the way to college. It’s still, you know…kinda fun, but the best parts are all over by now.

I’m going to blame this mostly on the episodic nature of this series. I talked a little in my review of the previous game about how the series’ once-a-month release schedule was becoming a problem for me, because I was starting to have trouble keeping track of the game’s characters. (It didn’t help much that so many of the characters have boring, one-trait, Disney Channel-style personalities, either.) This problem only became worse for me in Rise; not only did the game keep referencing characters and events that I only kind of vaguely remembered, but it also kept building on weird plot twists from Episode 4 that I didn’t really understand at the time and that weren’t adequately explained or even adequately recapped in this game. The overarching plot (Guybrush has to save the world via magic sponge), and the love quadrilateral I had no trouble at all following, and I still enjoyed, but the individual games of this series have just been released way too far apart for me to be able to keep track of everything, and, as a result, when I finished this episode—and, thus, the whole series—I was mostly just confused about what had happened, rather than exhilarated by the completion of a very well-told story.

Of course, this shouldn’t be as big a problem for you, since, at this point, all five episodes in the series are available, so you won’t be stuck playing Tales of Monkey Island for only a few hours every month; you’ll be able to play each episode right after the other. Having played them all, I’m convinced that this is the only way anyone should play this series, and I’m disappointed that Telltale decided to release the games episodically, instead of as a whole, thus making it difficult for us early adopters to follow what’s going on as well as we’d like.

That said, it’s not all skunk cabbage and Quest 64 with this game. It has a strong opening, with cute references to the original Secret of Monkey Island (and to the MI-related scandal that recently rocked Argentina), and a structure that also pays homage to the first game. Rise also has the latest in a series of My New Favorite Adventure Game Puzzles Ever—seemingly every title released by Telltale has one amazing puzzle that I fall in love with, and this one was no exception. I don’t want to go into it too much because I don’t want to completely spoil it, so I’ll just leave you with this phrase: three-way sword fight.

But the problem is that the series’ story comes to a puttering stop in this game, with convoluted and muddled plot twists that would be hard to unravel even if you had been playing these games one after the other, rather than following the play schedule dictated by the games’ release schedule, and that casts a shadow over everything else. It also didn’t help that I felt totally directionless much of the time while I was playing the game. It’s not just the game’s story that’s confusing—several of the puzzles have that “OK, I’ve done that…but I still don’t know what I’m doing, or how to advance the plot at all” feeling to them. (Though, I’m probably just bitter because it took me over a half hour, and an eventual trip to GameFAQs, to figure out this one puzzle, whose answer turned out to be “just move to the left slightly, you dork; the screen scrolls, and there’s more to this room.”)

There’s also this one thing that seriously does not make sense and kept bothering me, because I’ve played way too many Phoenix Wright games, and now I’m trained to spot inconsistencies and shout at people about them. There’s this ghost character, right? At one point in the game, this ghost wants to go through a door, but he can’t, because, as he’s non-corporeal, his hand just goes right through the doorknob, so he can’t open it. But if his hand just goes right through the doorknob…why doesn’t he just walk right through the goddamn door?! You are the worst ghost ever!

Rise of the Pirate God doesn’t at all feel like the epic finale to an awesome series of games—it mostly feels kind of messy. It even ends on a cliffhanger that, instead of making me think, “holy cow, what is going to happen next?!” made me think only, “…huh?”

But that doesn’t mean, necessarily, that Rise of the Pirate God is a Bad Game, and that you wasted your money by purchasing the whole series, rather than just the Really Really Good Games. The limitations of the story in this episode don’t make the jokes any less funny, which is half the reason people play Monkey Island games, anyway, story be damned, and the humor alone makes this experience more fun than not. Nevertheless, this isn’t really the note I’d hope TMI would go out on. Too bad.

But enough of my…impress-ed…ness…with the turns this game has taken. What—you might be asking, if you skipped my last three reviews and have no idea what a Monkey Island is—what, exactly, is this game? I’ve gone over this a few times now, but the core gameplay of these point-and-click adventure games involves exploring environments (in this case, an island in the Caribbean), stealing random items (in this case, for example, bacon grease), and using them to solve puzzles (such as winning your own trial and preventing your own execution). You also sometimes have to talk with people in order to progress the game, convincing them to do things, or obtaining items from them. If you mostly play videogames just to shoot people, because you’re a goddamn psychopath, these games won’t be for you; but, if you think you’d like using your mind to try to deduce how to use a seemingly random collection of items to get from Point A to Point B, you’ll almost definitely enjoy this game.

Of course, if that’s the boat you’re in, and you haven’t played any of the TMI games yet, you probably shouldn’t be reading this review right now, considering that this is the fourth game in the series; I’m guessing you wanna start with the first, instead. TMI is an episodic series, meaning that its games are short, cheap, and inextricably tied together; if you’re going to play them at all, you’ve gotta start from the beginning, and play them in order. This is even more essential for Trial and Execution than it is for any of the previous three, as this game takes place in the same setting as the first game, involves characters from all three, and asks you to remember who they are and what you’ve done with them in the past.

Which was kind of a problem for me, actually. I’ve been following these games as closely as anyone, but nearly all of Telltale’s new characters have been running together for me. Few of them have distinctive appearances or personalities—a flaw common to a lot of Telltale Games’s games, actually, as the company seems to have difficulty creating unique and/or interesting characters, generally relying instead on stereotypes and tropes to pass them off as people. (GameCola writer Elizabeth Medina-Gray mentioned in her review of the first Wallace & Gromit game that she’d be interested in seeing Telltale create an all-new game, instead of using an already-established franchise; after playing TMI, I’m a little wary about this, because Telltale really seems to struggle with finding identities for characters it’s made up on its own.) You’re pretty much guaranteed to scratch your head a few times, wondering, “was this guy the journalist, or the action figure fanboy? Or was he the guy playing bongos….”  It’s surprising to me that the company that gave us Morgan LeFlay, and the Soda Poppers from their Sam & Max games, also came up with so many cardboard cutouts in this series.

Speaking of things I’m perhaps unfairly critical about, I noticed something else in this game—the puzzles are sometimes telegraphed, by which I mean that you’ll figure out the solution to a puzzle before actually figuring out what the puzzle itself is. This seems like something that would come up in adventure games a lot, but I’ve only really been noticing it in the TMI series, and in this game in particular. For example, you’ll find a pile of metal shavings, and a monkey that’s magnetic, so you know you need to use them together at some point. Or you find a machine that can have strange effects on Guybrush, but only one of those effects doesn’t reset itself after about a second, so you know that’s the effect you’re gonna need later to solve a puzzle, whereas the others are just there for fun. Or, when you’re talking with someone, you have like fifteen dialogue options to ask for that person’s jacket, so you know you’re going to need to get his jacket at some point—even though that point doesn’t come until much later in the game. Maybe this was Telltale’s intentional way of trying to make the game easier, or to lessen the game’s frustration factor, but it takes some of the fun out of solving a puzzle when you can solve it that easily and so much sooner than you need to. This is especially problematic in an episodic game, which, fundamentally, is going to be easier than a full-length game. There are only so many places you can visit and so many items you can pick up in the 6 hours or so that this game takes to complete, and since there isn’t a ton you can do, that means that there aren’t a ton of possible solutions to puzzles—it’s the difference between a multiple-choice question with 30 possible answers, or one with only three.

Also in this game’s “cons” column are its controls, which I strongly feel are the worst thing ever to happen to videogames, but I’ve already gone over that several times now. I also really hate that the antagonist of this series has been an obnoxious French-person stereotype, whose only redeeming quality in four games was one funny line toward the end of this game.

In the “pros” column is, of course, the game’s plot-twisty story (including a continuation of the love quadrilateral from the past few games, and the now expected cliffhanger), and the game’s sense of humor. The puzzles are equal parts challenging and entertaining, except for one, which I thought might have been a glitch, to the point where I had to look up a walkthrough to confirm that I hadn’t broken the game. The game is also deceptively long, particularly for an episodic game. I said that it’s only about six hours, but more than once I thought the game was over, and was ready to complain about how ridiculous short it was, but then something crazy happened, and all the sudden I was actually only part of the way through.

The game also has incredibly moody music. Not moody like teenager moody—moody like something that sets the mood really well. Moody. Mood mood mood. (I’ve been getting at trouble at work lately for allowing too much word repetition in the reports I edit; this is my way of getting it out of my system.) It’s not a Chrono Trigger kind of good soundtrack; rather, it’s the kind of soundtrack that adds to the game’s atmosphere without drawing attention to itself. The songs are kind of indistinguishable and melt into the background; but I think it’s exactly this that makes them excel.

While this game, like Mostly Harmless of the Hitchiker’s Guide trilogy, is definitely the darkest, it’s not, like Mostly Harmless, a total downer. It’s a total fun-er. You’re doing yourself a disservice if you don’t at least check the TMI games out, and, if they sound fun to you, you’re doing yourself an even greater disservice if you don’t give Telltale Games lots and lots of money to support them in their comedy adventure game endeavors.

• Tales of Monkey Island: Chapter 5 (Wii Shop): This uncreatively-named game picks up where Chapter 4 left off, with Guybrush Threepwood being told by the Voodoo Lady that in order to break the curse on Elaine, he will have to die! Oh no! That’s…wait, wrong game. Or is it? Anyway, Guybrush probably dies for dramatic effect, but then he comes back to life (surprise!) in order to continue the series. They did the same thing in Pajama Sam 5: Although They May Be Bores, You Have To Do Your Chores.
• Family Party 30 Great Games Winter Games (Wii) seems like a thinly-veiled attempt to cash in on the Olympics. So does Global Agenda (Steam), although I suppose it could be an educational game about the United Nations (slogan: slightly more effective at peace-keeping than the Peloponnesian League!).
• S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat (PC) follows the adventures of George McFly as he tries to find a girlfriend. Sure, we’ve seen climbing trees and spying on people through binoculars in the Splinter Cell games, but this game takes things a step further with the new Restraining Order challenge that demands you keep a minimum distance away from the target at all times. That sounds like some good gameplay!

• White Knight Chronicles International Edition (PS3): Say you want to make a boatload of money with your new videogame. What’s the best way to do this? Obviously, you want to make a game based off someone else’s popular license, like last year’s super-popular Batman and Monkey Island games did, but say you don’t have enough money to afford a license. What do you do then? Well, take a license and just tweak a few things to avoid copyright issues. Thus, this game features the “White Knight,” that is, “Bruce Twayne” of “Gothic City” who fights “The Jooker” along with his sidekick “Ruben.”
• Chime (Xbox Live Arcade): Clearly, this is Microsoft’s answer to Wii Music. Ting!

All in all, not a bad week for videogames, even if there are a few clunkers. Let’s keep it up, February!

GameCola Podcast 20: Something New

In general, there are two topics:

0:00 to 16:45 – Discussion of the new GameCola Website.
16:46 to end – Discussion of GameCola’s end-of-year awards.

And more specifically, we discuss these various topics (and more!):

• Paul gets fanmail from himself.
• The new GameCola site.
• Michael Ridgaway and Vangie Rich are engaged.
• Paul gives a history of GameCola and how the new site came about.
• The only non-staff member who has commented on the new site is Eric’s sister Genevieve.
• The future of Carbonated News.”
• Are 75% of the new comments whiny?
• There’s a roundtable discussion on everyone’s favorite part of the website.
• Paul shocks everyone by revealing that Terrence Atkins is a girl.

The other famous Terence

• Paul’s beard (he won’t stop talking about it!).
• Michael’s failed attempt to get Marianne Fenwick on the podcast.
• The 2009 GameCola Videogame Awards.
• Half of the games that were nominated for “Most Disappointing” were also nominated for “Game of the Year.”
• Using the analog stick to aim is hard. It’s much easier to aim on the PC.
• There is much talk about Tales of Monkey Island. For this game, the controls are better on the Wii than the PC.
• The old Monkey Island games might not be as much fun as the newer ones.
• Batman: Arkum Asylum is the Game of the Year!
• King Tut is not in the new Batman game, though.

It would be very cool if King Tut appeared as the main villain in the next Batman movie.

• It was a close race for Best Portable Game this year.
• Apparently, we are not all in this together when it comes to High School Musical.

Enjoy the podcast and the new site, everybody!